As Good as a Comedy and Paddy McGann are two short novels that
reveal Simms’s talents as a comedic writer. While other works, like Border
Beagles, contain humorous sections or characters, these two works stand out
as sustained comedic successes. In these, Simms shows an understanding of
and skill at utilizing the tropes of frontier humor, popularized by the likes
of A.B. Longstreet’s Georgia Scenes, as well as a use of humor as
social commentary that foreshadowed the work of Twain. While each was
published previously, they were published together in one volume in 1972, ...

Stories and Tales is Volume V of the
University of South Carolina’s Centennial
Edition of the writings of William Gilmore Simms[1]. This volume contains fifteen stories and
tales, chronologically presented, collecting writings from all phases of
Simms’s career. [2] Simms wrote short fiction, often of wildly
inconsistent quality, throughout his long career; his best fiction was praised
by Poe, while his poorer fiction was often self-consciously born out of
economic necessity[3]. Simms published his short fiction widely both
in a variety of periodicals and multiple book-length ...

Judging
by a letter he wrote to his friend Evert Augustus Duyckinck in December 1868,
William Gilmore Simms considered Voltmeier,
his forthcoming Mountain Romance, to be, “in some respects, one of the most
remarkable books I have ever written,” and “among the most excellent of my
prose writings.”[1] Part of the Border Romance series, the novel was
inspired by the story of the infamous Allen Twitty, “a highly respected member
of a prominent family noted for public service,” whose indictment and
sensational trials for counterfeiting between 1805 and 1815 became a cause
célèbre ...